QUOTE(Arneoker @ Jul 6 2006, 08:56 AM)
Is it either or? Military or law enforcement? Shouldn't it be a mixture of both?
I supported the intervention in Afghanistan, and I still think that it was right. We can criticize a lot of the implementation, and subsequent policies there, but Bush was basically right in toppling the Taliban and pursuing Al Qaeda there.
We can debate about whether OBL was really "offered up" to Clinton only to have the lawyers turn him down, that point is disputed. But the real point is whether we are going to treat this primarily as a problem to be solved by the military. Military action was right in Afghanistan, but in Iraq? That looks like a solution in search of a problem to be fitted around it, or more likely a solution to Problem B sold as a solution to Problem A. And when terrorists commit their atrocities, what do people like the Spanish and British do? Well, they send the cops after them, to investigate and arrest them. What did Clinton do in 2000? He had the Millenium plotters arrested. That's what you usually do, use the law enforcement agencies. That is not inconsistent to use the military to take out terrorists, when that is appropriate and makes sense. (And we need to do a whole lot of other things.)
I think that we need a strong military, and active U.S. foreign policy, and not just because of the terrorists. There are a lot of nasty people out there, a lot of them are very dangerous, and we need force to deter them and sometimes fight them. They will not become nice if we just stop all the bad things that we do (I do think that what we do is a serious issue, but I reject the notion of some on the left and in the antiwar crowd that people in the rest of the world are nasty primarily because the U.S. does nasty things as naive in the extreme). We also need other approaches, all that "soft power" stuff, like foreign aid, diplomacy, leveraging our cultural influence, those kinds of things. I think that this would be something like Beamer's "ambassadors of peace." I would try to emphasize that kind of thing to the greatest extent possible, and be very sparing in our use of the military. But I think that using the military, especially as a sheathed sword to leverage and to strengthen our bargaining position, will continue to be very important for a very long time.
I supported the intervention in Afghanistan, and I still think that it was right. We can criticize a lot of the implementation, and subsequent policies there, but Bush was basically right in toppling the Taliban and pursuing Al Qaeda there.
We can debate about whether OBL was really "offered up" to Clinton only to have the lawyers turn him down, that point is disputed. But the real point is whether we are going to treat this primarily as a problem to be solved by the military. Military action was right in Afghanistan, but in Iraq? That looks like a solution in search of a problem to be fitted around it, or more likely a solution to Problem B sold as a solution to Problem A. And when terrorists commit their atrocities, what do people like the Spanish and British do? Well, they send the cops after them, to investigate and arrest them. What did Clinton do in 2000? He had the Millenium plotters arrested. That's what you usually do, use the law enforcement agencies. That is not inconsistent to use the military to take out terrorists, when that is appropriate and makes sense. (And we need to do a whole lot of other things.)
I think that we need a strong military, and active U.S. foreign policy, and not just because of the terrorists. There are a lot of nasty people out there, a lot of them are very dangerous, and we need force to deter them and sometimes fight them. They will not become nice if we just stop all the bad things that we do (I do think that what we do is a serious issue, but I reject the notion of some on the left and in the antiwar crowd that people in the rest of the world are nasty primarily because the U.S. does nasty things as naive in the extreme). We also need other approaches, all that "soft power" stuff, like foreign aid, diplomacy, leveraging our cultural influence, those kinds of things. I think that this would be something like Beamer's "ambassadors of peace." I would try to emphasize that kind of thing to the greatest extent possible, and be very sparing in our use of the military. But I think that using the military, especially as a sheathed sword to leverage and to strengthen our bargaining position, will continue to be very important for a very long time.
Arne posted this in the Online Cafe thread about the Marine in Fahrenheit 9/11. I'm reposting it here along with an article by Pat Buchanan that argues about whether our policies are working in places like Afghanistan. This also is an argument about whether the U.S. creates much of its problems with other countries because of what we do.
QUOTE
July 3, 2006 Issue
Copyright © 2006 The American Conservative
Time for an “Agonizing Reappraisal”
by Patrick J. Buchanan
Gazing across what Zbigniew Brzezinski once called the “arc of crisis,” U.S. foreign policy appears to be disintegrating.
On the Horn of Africa, Islamic warriors have seized Mogadishu. The warlords, our allies, are on the run. In Islamist Sudan, the Darfur horror rages on. In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, whom our secretary of state was only recently snubbing for undemocratic behavior, now appears again to be persona grata as our only alternative to the Muslim Brotherhood. Yet the Egyptian president scarcely seems chastened. His judges just confirmed a five-year jail sentence for his democratic opponent Ayman Nur, and his regime just ordered the International Republican Institute of John McCain to cease operations in Egypt.
While Ehud Olmert promises to work with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel moves inexorably to wall off the desired slices of the West Bank, annex Jerusalem and its suburbs, retain military control of the Jordan Valley, and get an America awash in debt to pick up the tab for a reported $10 billion.
Further east, the U.S. position appears to be crumbling. Despite installation of a new government, the Iraqi insurgency shows no signs of abating, and a religious civil war has begun. From January through May, 6,000 corpses, most showing gunshot wounds and others signs of torture, turned up in Baghdad’s morgue. May was the worst month, with 35-50 bodies coming in every day.
In Basra, once considered pacified, murderous violence among Shi’ite militias has forced Baghdad to declare a state of siege.
Whatever happened at Haditha, Baghdad is demanding apologies for U.S. atrocities and charging that American troops are callously cold to the collateral killing of Iraqi civilians.
We are building Crusader castles inside the country, but we seem to be losing support among both Americans and Iraqis. Democrats like John Edwards and John Kerry have moved into the antiwar base of their party where Russ Feingold and Al Gore already reside. Can Hillary be far behind?
In Afghanistan, the resurgent Taliban roam half a dozen of the southeast provinces. A traffic accident in which a U.S. military vehicle injured several Afghans and killed one resulted in a shoot-out, anti-American riots, and a Karzai condemnation of U.S. brutality. NATO is moving troops into the Taliban-infested region, but the insurgency is stronger than it has been since Americans arrived, and the opium trade the Taliban once virtually abolished is flourishing.
Under pressure from the EU-3 and Republican Party wise men, Bush has begun to engage Iran. And as Iran and we have common vital interests—both would suffer from all-out war, neither wants to see a breakup of Iraq or return of the Taliban—the makings of a deal are present.
But U.S. intervention in elections in Ukraine, Georgia, and Belarus and our in-your-face bellicosity toward Putin’s Russia are producing the predicted blowback. The decade-old Shanghai Cooperation Organization, consisting of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, is evolving into an alliance to expel the United States from Central Asia. The SCO appears about to offer membership to India, Pakistan, Mongolia, and Iran.
Iran’s Ahmadinejad is to attend the June 15 meeting in Shanghai. Already, the SCO has effected the expulsion of the U.S. military from Uzbekistan; and Kyrgyzstan has demanded, as the price for retention of U.S. bases, a 10,000 percent increase in rental fees.
In Afghanistan and Iraq, it is impossible today to see a day when America and her allies can eradicate the insurgency or effect a U.S. withdrawal without inviting strategic collapse. We seem to be on a treadmill. And Americans—concerned over the immigrant invasion from Mexico, soaring gas prices, falling stock prices, and deficits ad infinitum—are demanding a timetable to get us off.
Today, the Bush doctrine—the world’s worst regimes will not be allowed to acquire the world’s worst weapons—has been defied by North Korea. U.S. military interventions to create democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan are draining us of blood and treasure. Both, as of now, appear open-ended with no assurance of ultimate victory.
Bush’s democracy crusade has been exploited by Islamists in Egypt, Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran. The National Endowment for Democracy may claim victories in Georgia and Ukraine, but the cost of its meddling appears to be the loss of Russia and creation of an anti-American bloc from the Baltic Sea to the Taiwan Strait.
But while the Bush foreign policy appears to be failing at every turn, in neither party can one see another vision. Emerson’s words come to mind: “Things are in the saddle and ride mankind.”
In Dulles’s phrase, it’s time for an “agonizing reappraisal.”
July 3, 2006 Issue
http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_07_03/buchanan.html
Copyright © 2006 The American Conservative
Time for an “Agonizing Reappraisal”
by Patrick J. Buchanan
Gazing across what Zbigniew Brzezinski once called the “arc of crisis,” U.S. foreign policy appears to be disintegrating.
On the Horn of Africa, Islamic warriors have seized Mogadishu. The warlords, our allies, are on the run. In Islamist Sudan, the Darfur horror rages on. In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, whom our secretary of state was only recently snubbing for undemocratic behavior, now appears again to be persona grata as our only alternative to the Muslim Brotherhood. Yet the Egyptian president scarcely seems chastened. His judges just confirmed a five-year jail sentence for his democratic opponent Ayman Nur, and his regime just ordered the International Republican Institute of John McCain to cease operations in Egypt.
While Ehud Olmert promises to work with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel moves inexorably to wall off the desired slices of the West Bank, annex Jerusalem and its suburbs, retain military control of the Jordan Valley, and get an America awash in debt to pick up the tab for a reported $10 billion.
Further east, the U.S. position appears to be crumbling. Despite installation of a new government, the Iraqi insurgency shows no signs of abating, and a religious civil war has begun. From January through May, 6,000 corpses, most showing gunshot wounds and others signs of torture, turned up in Baghdad’s morgue. May was the worst month, with 35-50 bodies coming in every day.
In Basra, once considered pacified, murderous violence among Shi’ite militias has forced Baghdad to declare a state of siege.
Whatever happened at Haditha, Baghdad is demanding apologies for U.S. atrocities and charging that American troops are callously cold to the collateral killing of Iraqi civilians.
We are building Crusader castles inside the country, but we seem to be losing support among both Americans and Iraqis. Democrats like John Edwards and John Kerry have moved into the antiwar base of their party where Russ Feingold and Al Gore already reside. Can Hillary be far behind?
In Afghanistan, the resurgent Taliban roam half a dozen of the southeast provinces. A traffic accident in which a U.S. military vehicle injured several Afghans and killed one resulted in a shoot-out, anti-American riots, and a Karzai condemnation of U.S. brutality. NATO is moving troops into the Taliban-infested region, but the insurgency is stronger than it has been since Americans arrived, and the opium trade the Taliban once virtually abolished is flourishing.
Under pressure from the EU-3 and Republican Party wise men, Bush has begun to engage Iran. And as Iran and we have common vital interests—both would suffer from all-out war, neither wants to see a breakup of Iraq or return of the Taliban—the makings of a deal are present.
But U.S. intervention in elections in Ukraine, Georgia, and Belarus and our in-your-face bellicosity toward Putin’s Russia are producing the predicted blowback. The decade-old Shanghai Cooperation Organization, consisting of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, is evolving into an alliance to expel the United States from Central Asia. The SCO appears about to offer membership to India, Pakistan, Mongolia, and Iran.
Iran’s Ahmadinejad is to attend the June 15 meeting in Shanghai. Already, the SCO has effected the expulsion of the U.S. military from Uzbekistan; and Kyrgyzstan has demanded, as the price for retention of U.S. bases, a 10,000 percent increase in rental fees.
In Afghanistan and Iraq, it is impossible today to see a day when America and her allies can eradicate the insurgency or effect a U.S. withdrawal without inviting strategic collapse. We seem to be on a treadmill. And Americans—concerned over the immigrant invasion from Mexico, soaring gas prices, falling stock prices, and deficits ad infinitum—are demanding a timetable to get us off.
Today, the Bush doctrine—the world’s worst regimes will not be allowed to acquire the world’s worst weapons—has been defied by North Korea. U.S. military interventions to create democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan are draining us of blood and treasure. Both, as of now, appear open-ended with no assurance of ultimate victory.
Bush’s democracy crusade has been exploited by Islamists in Egypt, Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran. The National Endowment for Democracy may claim victories in Georgia and Ukraine, but the cost of its meddling appears to be the loss of Russia and creation of an anti-American bloc from the Baltic Sea to the Taiwan Strait.
But while the Bush foreign policy appears to be failing at every turn, in neither party can one see another vision. Emerson’s words come to mind: “Things are in the saddle and ride mankind.”
In Dulles’s phrase, it’s time for an “agonizing reappraisal.”
July 3, 2006 Issue
http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_07_03/buchanan.html